KevKelley

I do like StellaNova. It has a ring to it. The “StellaNova!” I also like the Stella+, as I feel like it is a subtle dig at the 2600+, but also the plus symbols shows that Stella is transcending emulation and making a kind of grand return to hardware. And as I had posted my opinions of the 2600+ and how Atari should have kept with their numerical naming conventions for their future 8-bit offerings, I would lean towards something along those lines. 2600... 5200... 7800… the 10400 or abbreviated as the 10-4. Gives it a kind of vintage feel like you are plugging in a CB radio while ready to play. Atari and Smokey and the Bandit go together real well.

Thanks. I thought that this might be the effect. I had considered making some giant workaround of everything whenever a collision happened when I tried this to see. I did t notice any remarkable difference, apart from the scan lines, so it may be a good thing in the end.

I was kind of curious. My games seems to work pretty good but I will notice a scanline jump to 263 at only a couple points - when there is a collision with two sprites. I have one drawscreen so I put another drawscreen command in there with my collision codes and it seemed to resolve many of the issues I was facing. I had thought that you should only have one drawscreen (although I think in some other programs I had done more and just moved when it is executed. Is there any benefit to have more than one? Is it a best practice to try and have more instead of squeezing everything into one? Does this make sense to anyone? Lol

I need less ideas, not more! I am trying so hard to wrap up my couple projects. Lol

What kind of emulation is used on the Evercade? I had looked up and found the company behind this has also done work for Evercade releases so it would make me believe if anything they are using what the Blaze uses.

I may have to leak at your code for the score. May use this for future projects.

…and what I put together wasn’t some assembly routine. Just a few lines of bB. But I imagine someone could make a kind of score routine I wonder how Amoeba Jump made it.

I had done something similar in Pinfinger but not for score but for knife position. Implementing this was easy, as I would just check some coordinate and then each number would be a line defining a couple of the playfield variables. I could picture it being easy to implement by doing something similar.

This is just a little update. I have been tweaking some things under the hood. I added a titlescreen and menu, with a couple options - normal laser or continuous, different planets, or maximum speed of asteroids. There are still a little kinks to work out with the asteroid speed and collision with the lasers and asteroids (they may occasionally speed up towards you or skip several pixels!) If you choose normal lasers a power up will appear above the planet that can recharge your lasers. I also added a "Ready" graphic to give you time to, well, get ready. I also made a Game Over screen once a player runs out of lives. There are a couple scanline issues but I am narrowing down the culprit and think I found a workable solution. But then I may call this done to finish up some other projects I was working on.

Can a score equal a variable? I thought it would have to be an actual number because the score is made up of multiple things (_sc1, _sc2, _sc3)

I know I have had similar, though not exactly the same issues. Where everything seemed fine and worked good in emulation but it would give me issues on hardware and it would sometimes be something like I accidentally left a colon somewhere.

Same. I usually make a new save each day I start work. Could be minor or could be major. If I decide to make a big change after work in a certain day or I want to try a couple different methods I will then make a second save file with a letter and then each branch would maintain that letter designation until it becomes the main save I work off.

I guess more specifically I was wondering if it were possible to use a sprite for multiple variables, like have a sprite that is 20 pixels high but set player height to 10. So perhaps you look at the 11th row to read that value as a number. I had no real immediate use for it but was wondering if it was something possible.

Just wondering out loud here. I had played around with pointers to reuse things like the score sprites and had wondered - is it possible to read specific parts of the sprite, like if a pixel is on or off?

Speaking from experience l, I started with a standard kernel, realized my project needed more and jumped right into DPC+, and then realized I needed more practice. It has some quirks that get some getting used to but I find learning the ins and outs of bB first really helps.

This was the first time I experienced it but I noticed when trying to compile this last time a window popped up in the corner. I thought it weird because I never really never go online with it or download anything.

I went back into threat detector and allowed the files. Everything is back up! Damn windows deciding to eat into my free time!

Think I found the culprit… Thinking back to anything that my computer did last couple days and I remembered Microsoft Threat Detector popping up. It had scanned and said there were no threats but I loaded it up today to look into it further. It seems that it quarantined some of my bB stuff…

Normally I use Visual batari Basic and have no problems. I last used my tablet 2 days ago. Today I decided to work on some stuff and I loaded VbB like normal, picked my program, and clicked compile. While the bottom said “2600 Basic compilation completed,” it did not show the space used up or any of the bank info I normally see and when I tried to run a Missing Binary warning popped up. Weird. I rebooted my tablet and tried again. Same thing. I decided to try Visual Studio Code and it wouldn’t save. When I checked the .bin folder there was no new files. I was able to save my project but not compile it. Any thoughts on what could have caused this or any troubleshooting?

I cannot remember who but someone had suggested making something to read the data to kind of make a cartridge based video out. I wonder if something like this would be of use - making a pass through cart that can decipher the video and have a HDMI out. (This is based off my little understanding of what was discussed in another thread)

Hmm. The only thing I am wondering that I would look at in my code is if is either where the placement of the repositioning of the sprite is in relationship to the drawscreen and messing with what @Gemintronicmentioned about the flicker mitigation. The only other thing I could think of is maybe skipping a frame and then reposition it to avoid any conflicts.

I wish I had it growing up. It is still a really fun game to play and even now my children love playing it. Thank you for programming it. I may not be the best but it is providing me some fun trying to figure out how to make it work on the Atari. Hopefully I do the original justice.

Without seeing specifics the only thing I can think of is that either the top or bottom of player2 sprite is too close to the other sprites resulting in a flicker. I cannot recall but I thought the safe space in between sprites in DPC+ is somewhere around 15 pixels.

Don’t give me any ideas… Well… Years ago a grocery racing game was something I had considered so maybe…

The sprites are very well done.